Downfall And Rise Page 11

  I did wind up seeing my friends and having the tabletop game with them. Everyone had so much fun we scheduled another game next weekend, and that time Davelon came to it. I was surprised. Davelon did some gaming, especially virtual and shooters, but a lot of people at church still thought tabletop gaming was demonic, the old Lord of the Rings movies notwithstanding. If enough people found out, the new pastor might make things uncomfortable for him.

  The old pastor, who had left around the time of Dad's suicide, wouldn't have cared, quoted certain passages to explain why he didn't care, and would have helped nip any harmful rumors in the bud. He was another person I missed.

  We welcomed Davelon anyway, especially because he was one of the few people that were as welcoming to Himari and Andre as Rachel and I were, and rolled up a one-shot-character for him (he liked fighter characters with high Search and Sense Motive skills. Go figure). He had fun, and we had fun having him, but when I watched him carefully he looked just a little uncomfortable playing with us. I think he wanted to talk to me about something after the game, and I was right.

  “So what's up?” I asked as he pulled me aside. “And shouldn't you still be recovering from the football game this weekend? Not that we don't enjoy having you here,” I added quickly. Davelon was one of the team's defensive stars. He played well, and played hard, often going the extra mile for the team. The only reason he wasn't the team's defensive star was because he was really humble and really good at sharing credit.

  “No, it's fine,” he said awkwardly. “I... didn't play this week.”

  “What?” I asked loudly, wincing slightly as my own noise made my head hurt. “It was a playoff game. How would the coach not play you this late in the season?” a thought struck me. “Your leg's not flaring up again is it?”

  “My leg's been fine for years,” Davelon said, a little more forcefully than I could tell he intended to, judging by his wince. He took a deep breath and spoke quickly.

  “I quit the team.”

  “What?” I half shouted like an idiot, grabbing my head as I gave myself another small headache. I caught Andre's worried glance from back inside the house, then saw him duck his head and try to mind his own business. Himari didn't look up, but she nudged him as if reminding him to give us privacy.

  “What?” I repeated more quietly. “Why?”

  There were probably just as many football scouts looking at Davelon as there were looking at Chris. As much as I wanted to respect my friend's choices, I was really worried about his future here. A football scholarship wasn't something you should just throw away.

  “...I had to,” Davelon said after a moment, not meeting my eyes. “I... found out,” he swallowed, then finally seemed to be able to find the words, and looked me in the eye. “I found out about Coach Biggs.”

  “What about Coach?” I said, still confused. Davelon used to be a lot faster about making sense.

  “Coach Biggs has been asking me to keep an eye on you,” Davelon said, still speaking quickly and not looking at me in the eye. “He's been asking me about what routes you take in the school's hallways, when you stop for the restroom, when and where you stay after class, everything.”

  “Right,” I said slowly. “He promised Mom he'd try to protect me after I became a target from the old players.” Hurry up and start making sense, man.

  “He lied,” Davelon said, raising his voice bitterly and repeating himself. “He lied.”

  Davelon took another breath, and looked me in the eye more firmly. “Every time you've been pushed or jumped, successfully at least, has been after Coach asked about you. Said he'd try and make sure someone was watching you when I wasn't. But every one of those times the only people there were the ones who had messed you up.”

  Another breath, and he kept talking. This was really hard for him to say, and me to believe.

  “Before last week, I had started getting suspicious. That's why I got to you so fast after you got attacked last week. I wanted to keep an eye on my friend just in case. But I still failed,” he added miserably.

  “C'mon man,” I said. The last thing I wanted was to have one of the only people still trying help me feel guilty about it. It was hard enough to accept their help without that nonsense. “The guys that attacked me weren't even football players. Probably just three of Rhodes' cronies.”

  “They've been hanging out with other players for a while,” Davelon said firmly. “And I've seen them talking to both Chris and Coach on more than one occasion. So, Friday, I confronted Coach about it.”

  Davelon paused again, before continuing, and since I was so creeped out, I interrupted him.

  “What did he say?”

  “You don't want to know,” my friend replied uncomfortably.

  “I kinda do,” I replied. “It's a little hard to believe that someone with a job and a reputation would risk both those things on hurting someone like me.”

  “That's right,” Davelon mumbled. “That was the reason I had to bring this up anyway.” He raised his head again. This still felt like a mix of slowly defusing a bomb and pulling a really stuck tooth. “You sure you want to know what he said?”

  “Yeah, man. Help me hear something that's actually proof about what you're saying.

  “He said, and I quote: 'Davelon, you're a good kid, and a good player, but it's time for you to make a choice. Are you going to stay loyal to the team, or are you going to throw out the team's future and your own for a pedophile's sick brat?'”

  For a second I couldn't hear anything. Everything got blurry and started to spin. I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach, and my already-poor balance shifted. I grabbed the porch's wooden rails and dug my cane down for balance.

  I tried to make sense of the fact that people in my town now hated my dead father so much, hated me now, that they were willing to go after me, to put the final nail in the coffin life had thrown me into. It didn't make any sense. What did anyone have to gain, by messing with my already miserably hard life?

  “I don't...what...why?” I finally choked out. Davelon, guessing what I meant, shrugged.

  “I don't know. If I had to guess, it's because the coach is close to a lot of people who either hate the black eye you gave the football team all those years ago or who were the most outraged by, well...”

  He didn't want to say outraged by my dad's crimes.

  Seeing that I was finally getting my composure back, Davelon began speaking again.

  “Now I know you're going to ask 'what about my scholarship offers?' Best I can tell, they're not going to be affected. My grades are good enough to get into college on their own, and scouts are still looking at me. Besides, when either your Mom or my dad busts this thing wide open, it will be better for me to no longer be on the team.”

  “What do you mean about your dad?” I asked. Davelon's dad was a high-profile cop in the metropolis that treated our small town like a nearby suburb.

  “I'm saying since there's a good chance criminal law, not just civil law, was broken, the cops or feds might get involved at some point. So I figured I should go ahead and tell Dad everything I knew about what was going on.”

  “That's still a big risk for me, man.” I replied, grateful, but still worried. “I don't want anyone coming after you like they've been coming after me.”

  Davelon practically glared at me.

  “Well it was a pretty big risk for you and your dad to pull me and my family out of that burning car four years ago. It was a pretty big risk for you guys to take me in for those months when my parents were in the hospital and I needed a place to stay until they recovered. And it was at least something of an inconvenience for you to follow me around school and help me until my leg healed. And I shouldn't even have to mention that while I was healing said leg and talking about how I was worried I'd never play again, you found time to help me with my physical therapy, and even spoke with Coach about how you thought I might be a great player if everyone gave me a chance. Which they did at that ti
me, by the way, because that was before you took a hit for stopping Chris at that party and before this nonsense started spreading about your dad.”

  Davelon was one of the few people who unequivocally disbelieved that my dad was guilty. He just couldn't reconcile the man that had saved his family’s lives with the man that left that note and committed suicide.

  He took a breath, but kept going.

  “So excuse me if I don't forget all of that. Especially the part on how you took care of me back when I couldn't walk. So it doesn't make sense not to return the favor. Which I thought I was doing, but I wasn't suspicious enough. I'm sorry,” he finished, the heat dying in his voice as he apologized.

  I nodded dumbly, accepting an apology I never needed. My brain lurched around my skull, trying to find the response it was looking for.

  “Davelon?” I asked after it finally found it. “Thank you for being my friend.”

  Chapter 10: Pull

  My room was glowing again. I rolled over in my bed, trying to blink away the light and go back to sleep, and couldn't because the bed was too uncomfortable. I rolled again, then again, then stopped, because rolling always hurt at least a little and this time I wasn't feeling in pain from the action. I just felt like I was sleeping on wet grass while still wearing my jeans. Looking down revealed that I was fully clothed, and looking under me revealed an entire floor of slightly damp grass.

  I blinked a few times, to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

  It didn't work, because I was dreaming again. I saw mist all around me. Drifting through the air. Clinging on the thick green leaves and long emerald grass all around me. Above me, the sky sparkled black with stars, matching the sparkle of the mist below.

  After a while, I realized I could hear music. I followed the sound, expecting to see the same place I had visited earlier. But instead of the meadow with the outcropping of stones, I found the ruins of some Athenian-style white marble building. Steps and columns led up to a building that had crumbled from the top down, lacking a roof and a few walls. Yet the floor and remaining structure was clean, as if it had been recently and consistently swept and polished. The music seemed to be coming from the floor itself.

  Standing over the floor was the pale woman called Guineve, in a long white dress that looked like it was made of clouds. She was looking up at the sky for something, but she turned her head at me and smiled when I came nearby.

  “Welcome back, Challenger,” she said regally. I offered an awkward nod and greeting back, carefully trying to stare at her face and not her thinly-covered chest. She smiled as if I was amusing her. “Stell is waiting for you downstairs. You should go see her.”

  I climbed the steps to track the sound, and found a white stone stairway leading down into a dark basement. The music seemed to drift from there, and if I looked carefully I could see a faint blue light emit from the room below. I descended carefully, wishing for the first time that I still had my cane, if only to defend myself.

  It proved unnecessary.

  The basement proved to be reasonably lit as soon as I got far enough away from the stairway, even accounting for the starlight that streamed down into it. The faint blue light came from an array of marble stones at the back of the wide room, similar to what Stell had showed me before.

  Stell was also there, but she was not as she was before.

  Her skin had darkened from a mysterious gray to a mid-brown hue, as if she was of mixed African-Latino descent. Braided hair draped down to her shoulders, bouncing to her current movements. Her body had also filled out considerably, completely fleshing out clothing that closely resembled a shirt and jeans. The shirt looked to have writing on it, but it was impossible to read given how much she was moving, and it honestly wasn't the most noticeable thing about her right now.

  I tried not to stare at her hips as she was swaying, rocking, and stepping to what closely resembled a reggaeton dance beat that came from the glowing marble stones next to her.

  After a couple of moments, I still realized that I was still trying, and still failing, not to stare. I tried to blame it on the oddness of the situation itself, the fact that I was in another world, at the bottom of some faux Greek architecture, listening to early 21st century reggaeton music while a race-shifting girl danced in front of me. But the truth of it all was that Stell would have been mesmerizing all by herself. I still don't know if I can do her description justice. It wasn't just her figure. Guineve's figure was also incredibly eye-catching, but it didn't affect me nearly as much as Stell did. Stell moved as if she was meant to dance, and knew it, and had always known it. She seemed... relaxed? Excited?

  Carefree, I realized. She seemed carefree. Like she finally had a break from a hundred thousand responsibilities for a few minutes, and was taking advantage of it in one of her favorite ways.

  It seemed wrong to stare, but even more wrong to disrupt the scene by revealing my presence. I used that logic to remain where I was for a few more moments. But in hindsight, it's not like I had anywhere else to go.

  Finally though, her song ended, but she just scooted over and touched the glowing stone, starting up another one. I finally decided that hanging around until the end of the current song was fine (maybe?), but watching her for any longer would officially be creepy. I still didn't want to break up what looked like a private and restful moment for her, so I quietly walked back over to the stairs, trying to think of where else I could go to wait for her. But I couldn't come up with anything, because ruined Athenian temples don't have sitting rooms or coffee lounges.

  On my way up, I glanced at her one last time. She was doing a spin-step as she danced, and her eyes met mine for that moment. She gave a friendly, confident smirk, completed her spin, and kept dancing.

  I couldn't help but freeze. Part of it was relief of her not being offended, or feeling like her privacy was invaded. But most of it was that her smile was mesmerizing.

  Stop, I told myself. Don't fall for this girl. You don't even know if you're dreaming or not.

  Then I realized that falling for an exotic dream-girl was hard to avoid no matter what I told myself.

  At any rate, my internal conversation ended because she immediately glanced my way again, but this time with a panicked expression on her face.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said quietly. “You're actually here. Again. This soon.”

  “Um, hi?” I offered awkwardly. “I um, tried knocking and calling out, but the... door was open, so, um...”

  “You saw me,” she said, in a voice that was almost a squeak.

  “Um, yeah,” I replied, struggling with the sinking feeling inside of myself. That second glance she did must have been a double-take. I have no idea who she thought I initially was. “Sorry. I didn't know where else to go.” Just move forward and keep talking, I finally decided. “Where did you learn how to dance like that?”

  “I, um,” she hesitated, then apparently decided to just push forward as well. “The last Challenger was able to bring some of the knowledge from his world over here. He made it so that every now and then I can access some of your communication media with Avalon's stone technology. I haven't been able to access much of it though. This music was one of the first things I found, and it's stuck with me over the centuries.”

  “Centuries?” I asked. “Reggaeton music videos haven't been around for more than a hundred years.”

  “On your world, sure,” she replied casually. “I don't know why time crawls so slowly there. But it's a little faster everywhere else, and a lot faster here.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Does that get boring?”

  “It used to. But these days, so much more happens that I can take part in. And when everything's still slow and stable, I have the music the last Challenger brought. Still trying to get the hang of it, as you can tell.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said honestly. “Your moves were incredible.” I never had any talent for dancing, but Stell's technique was the most mesmerizing I had ever seen.

  �
�Really?”

  Her smile finally came back, and one of her hands reached up, as if to catch a stray braid of hair, before it suddenly jerked down. But she was still smiling. “I can never see myself dance, and Guineve says she isn't a very good judge. Wait,” she suddenly shook her head. “Wait a minute. How did you get here again?”

  Oh yeah. Maybe that was more relevant. How do I keep winding here?

  “Sorry,” I shrugged. “Still have no idea. What did we decide before again? Stroke, magic power, or something?”

  “Did it happen differently this time?”

  “When I went to bed I woke up here. On the grass outside, I mean. I met Guineve outside and she said I should go down here.”